


Dig

by acornsandravens



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Arguing, F/M, First Time, Pretend Married, pwp?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 04:49:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acornsandravens/pseuds/acornsandravens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Maybe it would make their marriage lie more convincing if they looked like they wanted to throttle one another after three days in the saddle."</p><p>Arya and Gendry drunkenly decide they'll be man and wife while they travel, and we answer the question: what would happen if they DID get a featherbed?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dig

**Author's Note:**

> I like it when they argue.

There hadn’t ever been any question when they left the coast that it would be together. They hadn’t ever agreed upon it, but it was decided all the same. Talking about the specifics was best done after a little wine, as their bickering tended to be gentler when one or both of them had been in their cups.

“We’ll have to say you’re my sister.” Gendry announced. He must have known how well that idea would go over, because he flinched before the toe of her boot ever made contact with his shin under the table.

“Why are you always trying to make me into your sister?” she asked, pointing at him with the bottle of wine in her hand accusingly. He might have forgotten The Peach, but she hadn’t. It still prickled her, years later. And she still thought he was _stupid_ , too. No sooner than she’d crawled off the docks and found him at the smithy had he started up again, insisting that if she wanted to stay with him she’d have to be his sister. And of all the things she’d ever been, Gendry’s _sister_ was the worst.

Fortunately no one here had much cared who the smith shared his roof with, but apparently he’d yet to let the notion go that _somewhere_ , people would _talk_.

“Arya, people would ask questions about a man travelling alone with a woman. What if they thought I’d stolen you from somewhere?”

“You couldn’t steal me,” she argued. “and how many people have you met who’d intercede if they did think that you had? Other than _you_.”

It wasn’t an insult, but it sure sounded like one the way she flung it at him.

“You would.”

“I wouldn’t assume that a woman would have to be kidnapped to choose to travel with a man. It’s practicality. Two sets of eyes are better than one.”

“And why do we need two sets of eyes?” he demanded, clenching his horn of ale so tightly it was likely to split under the passion of his righteousness. “It’s because the roads are crawling with rapers and bandits and every sort of brigand. The war drove them out like bugs from under a log. Caution isn’t a bad thing, Arya.”

“How is pretending to be your sister cautious? That’s not going to stop anyone from robbing us.” If he was going to argue with her he could at least choose something that made sense after a jug of ale and half a bottle of wine.

“It just is.”

“Well I’m not pretending to be your sister.” she sneered.

Gendry seemed unbothered by her decision. “Fine. You can be my wife.”

Arya narrowed her eyes at him, attempting to souse out how serious he was being. It didn’t look like a bluff. Maybe it was the wine, but she couldn’t think of why, exactly, that it was such a poor notion though she was sure there were plenty of reasons. He looked smug sitting over there, like he’d found a way to bend her to his will. Never.

She shrugged. “Fine.”

It’s not like she ever intended to be anyone’s true wife, anyway, and somehow being Gendry’s wife was less objectionable than being his sister. If he was going to insist on his stupid notions of propriety then at least a compromise could be counted as a victory. It seemed like with the two of them no one ever truly won the argument.

 ~

For all their drunken planning there hadn’t been anyone to tell of their newly married status save the horses.

“Where are all these rapers and brigands, husband? I thought they’d be thick as bugs under a log. I only see biting flies and trees.”

They’d been travelling for three days now, and Gendry hadn’t been particularly cheerful company.

“Why don’t you go flip a stone, then, and find some worms to eat for supper while you’re under there? More bread for me.”

“That’s no way to speak to your wife or your sister.” Arya thought of Sansa. She might have told Sansa to go eat worms once, it sounded suitably horrifying enough to be something Arya would have said. Gendry never would eat a bug, not when they’d been hungry children on the Kingsroad and not now, either, but she was starting to influence him in other ways regardless.

“You’re neither, _my lady_.”

“Truly? As I recall I’ve been both. And that makes _you_ a _Targaryen_.”

“It’d make you a Targaryen too, then.” he replied stubbornly.

It was the height of familiarity, the two of them riding through the forest trading childish barbs. Idly, she wondered if Hot Pie was still living at that inn where’d they left him. Or living at all, she supposed might be the better question. Still, she wouldn’t mind having someone else to talk to when Gendry was temperamental.

And he’d been in a fine fettle. Moody as the bull he’d been called once, banging his horns against a fence to see if he could break it down.

Arya didn’t fully understand his feelings. He needn’t have agreed to this if he was going to be sour the whole way, though maybe it would make their marriage lie more convincing if they looked like they wanted to throttle one another after three days in the saddle.

He wasn’t sleeping well at night, that much she knew. They slept close, as much to share warmth as to lend credence to their lie if anyone came upon them. Well, they ‘slept’ in turns, really. They both woke so many times during the night she wasn’t sure how they weren’t dozing in the saddle and letting their mounts wander. Gendry seemed to spend most of his resting hours rigid as a board next to her, jaw clenched and staring into the fire like he wanted to fight it. It’d probably put anyone in a foul temper.

It was a week and a half before they reached the first inn they’d planned to stop at.  There was no need to waste unnecessary coin when the weather held for camping, but a few stops to resupply and enjoy a  hot meal (and maybe some more ale for Gendry, she thought) would do much to improve morale.

He wasn’t so grumpy as he had been, but he still seemed weary. She tried to stay out of his way and not needle him unnecessarily, but they’d always gotten along together just about as well as steel on glass. They were too much alike, too sensitive to one another’s moods. Just looking at him scowl was enough to get under her skin, and by the time they reached the inn she was as irritable as an old badger to match his bull.

~ 

The room was cheap. The bed was hemorrhaging stuffing from one corner but Gendry supposed that didn’t matter to him as he wouldn’t be sleeping on it and after over a week in the forest any room with a fire and furniture counted as a palace in his mind. The floor would serve him fine, though he’d probably share it with a few mice tonight.

Maybe he’d actually get a decent night’s sleep without Arya next to him, _breathing_ all the time. He’d have rather had her snore than make those quiet sounds of contentment, little murmurs that sounded far too enticing to his ears. Some nights she cried out, and that was the worst because he knew she was having some terrible dream but when she was close and warm and made sounds like that it made him hard anyway, and he was sure that meant he was completely depraved.

Why couldn’t she just have been his sister? That would have kept everything completely proper between the two of them by necessity. He was sure Arya hadn’t considered they’d have to actually _act_ like man and wife in front of people when she’d agreed to this farce. When they’d approached the town he stuck even closer to her than usual, and she kept looking over her shoulder like she couldn’t figure out why he was there. And she’d marched right up to the inn keep to get their room for the night even though she ought to have let her ‘husband’ handle the business. When he’d pressed his hand into the small of her back while she bargained he’d felt her stiffen, but she at least remembered not to whirl around and ask him what in the Seven Hells he was doing.

“Well, at least the bedding’s clean.” she announced, pulling back the threadbare blankets. They were a vague and non-descript shade of grey that might have been blue once, but at least he wouldn’t have to hear her complain about fleas biting her all night. Arya still seemed to hold him personally responsible for the black flies that had been thick as pease in porridge so far.

“Is there a bathhouse?” she asked him, shucking her pack with a sigh of relief.

“A small one, I think we passed it on the way from the stables.”

She looked tired too, and a bath might do both of them some good as road dust had deepened her complexion a full shade and the lines of his knuckles were black.

“Do you want to go first?” she asked, opening the front of her jerkin and exposing the thin shirt she wore beneath.

“What?” he had quite forgotten the thread of this conversation, wondering how much else she had on under there.

“The baths?”

“No, you go. I’ll stay with our things; see if I can’t find some food.”

Arya nodded, and then paused. “Wait. Do husbands and wives bathe together?” she looked a bit pink under the dirt.

When he’d regained his ability to speak he answered her truthfully. “I don’t know.”

He’d never had a wife to learn things like that with. And while the idea of bathing with a woman in itself was appealing-wet skin, slick skin, soap gliding over warm curves- the thought of bathing with Arya put more fear in him than the war had. “If they do I doubt it’s for bathing, my lady.”

Gendry added that last honorific out of habit for breaching propriety, and he winced as he said it. Arya hated that, and he’d been doing it constantly to irk her.

She only shrugged at him this time, trying far too hard to look like she wasn’t as relieved as he felt.  “Oh. Well, as long as it won’t look odd if we go separately...”

“I don’t think it will.”

“Good.” she snapped.

“Yes, _good_.” He bit back, not sure why the tone had changed so suddenly. In a huff Arya grabbed her spare set of clothes and disappeared down the hall, leaving Gendry with too many thoughts about _Arya_ and _Bathing_ and _Together_ swirling around in his head. At least he wasn’t as depraved as he had feared. If he was he would have told her they should bathe together, though whether or not he regretted that choice remained to be seen.

The inn keep provided them with their dinner; a dry stringy joint of mutton that Gendry suspected had been on the fire since the last guests had come through, a loaf of thick oat bread and some cooked turnips. He’d also procured a small jug of ale, and it was looking increasingly likely he’d drink the whole thing and sleep very soundly after all.

He waited for Arya to return before he ate, though he’d tried the ale. Bitter and metallic tasting but it would do better than Dreamwine if he had enough of it.

When she came back from the baths she was wrapped in an enormous bundle of layers, every halfway clean article of clothing she owned on to ward off the chill. She stood by the fire and hovered next to him, picking at their meal in a stubborn silence. She’d used the soap he carried in his pack, and the familiar herbal smell clouded his senses. It was a familiar scent, but on her skin it was different, provocative and sweet and distracting.

He wanted to know if she smelled like him all over. He wanted to kiss and taste and find where that heavy note of Arya, of _her_ , was coming from.

 _You’ll never know_ , he told himself angrily.

He forced himself to take a portion of the food for himself but he ate it without tasting, almost without chewing it properly in his haste to flee. He washed it down with a swallow of ale and left the rest for Arya.

He’d soaked until his skin wrinkled, scrubbed until it stung.  He might have stayed there all night if the man who had taken his copper at the door hadn’t started pounding on the wall asking for another if he was going to stay in there any longer. So Gendry toweled himself off haphazardly and wished he hadn’t left in such a rush that he’d left his heavier clothes in his pack. The sun had gone down and it was chillier than it had been, and he was missing the warmth of the bathhouse all too keenly on the short walk back to the inn.

The tips of his hair felt half frozen by the time he made it in inside. He was thinking of his spot by the fire with longing, and sighed in relief when he saw the embers still glowing hot and red in the hearth.

“I’d thought you’d left me.” Arya said from the bed, their silent feud apparently forgotten for the moment. She meant it as a jape, but the humor never quite made it to her eyes when she talked about people leaving her, and that made him feel like a horrible fool for being so short with her these last several days. It wasn’t her fault that he didn’t know how to act around her anymore.

So instead of being insulted at some imagined impugning of his honor in her words he only shook his head. “I wouldn’t leave you, Arya.”

“I’m glad.” Her small smile was almost girlish, shy. She was sitting in bed, in her shift with her hair loose and maybe even combed tonight, and it was good that she was smiling at him again.

“I am too.” Gendry had thrown another log on the fire and was warming himself, shrugging into the depths of his damp shirt for warmth.

“Come under the covers if you’re cold.” Arya called from behind him, and when he turned around she was holding the edge of the blanket up for him.

“I’ve made myself a place over here for the night. Don’t worry about me, it’s plenty warm by the fire.” He told her.

“Don’t be stupid. This is the first bed we’ve seen in a week and I know you’ve barely been sleeping.” she argued. “Besides, what if the the inn keep came in and saw me over here and my husband bedded on the floor?”

“Likely he’d think I’d gotten on your bad side.”

“You will have if you insist on sleeping on the floor, Gendry. We paid good coin for this room and there’s plenty of room for two.”

“This is a kinder floor than many I’ve slept on, Arya.” He knows she’s seen worse too. Harrenhal and stinking mud cages with their piss and blood and death smell were memories he hadn’t been able to outgrow.

He’d almost gotten the furs spread out on the floor where he wanted them when he looked over and saw Arya’s bare feet next to him. “These floors are freezing. I hope you’re happy, now the bed’s gone cold.” she complained, hands on her hips and her shift pulled tight, almost thin enough to see through across her chest, but she was paying no heed to how she filled out her clothes at the moment.

She wormed her way into his furs feet first, sighing in contentment at the softness and the warmth.

“Arya, go to bed.”

“You take the bed. I’ll take the floor if it’s so warm and comfortable over here.”

He flipped the corner of the furs back down where she’d upset it. “Please don’t be stubborn about this.”

Arya just laughed, probably at him calling her stubborn for once but Gendry was unmoving. Unfortunately it seemed she knew exactly how to move him. She always had.

Her fingers knotted in the front of his shirt. She was surprisingly strong, and as he didn’t want to tear his only clean shirt he didn’t pull away.

“Just pretend I’m your sister,” she hissed, and that momentary truce they’d made was gone.

She tugged him across their room bodily. Her lips were an unforgiving line, just as unforgiving as the look of steeled pain in her eyes, like she’d been expecting him to hurt her all along and he had.

His feet failed to follow the closer they got to the bed. She never let go of his shirt. When he stopped short she only pulled harder, merciless on his threadbare wardrobe.

“Arya, I can’t.” he told her quietly.

She started to argue with him about the _whys_ and the _why nots_ , but when his hands grabbed hold of her shift she suddenly understood what he meant, what it is he _can’t_.

The look in her eyes is danger, he knows it, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from molding his hands to her body.

“Come to bed, Gendry.” she whispered, pressing closer to his touch.

“Arya, we’re not _really_ married.”  Maybe he _really_ was stupid. It doesn’t matter. He contradicted himself immediately by kissing her; the draw of her lips too enticing married or not. Just one quick touch of their lips is all he needs. Just once. He pulls back quickly. “It isn’t-

“Stop talking.” she murmured against his lips, kissing any words he might have planned on saying away before he even thinks them. And kissing her back is all he can do, holding onto her tight and feeling her open beneath his touch, his lips tasting and teasing Arya like he’d wanted so badly to do for what felt like forever. They kissed like they had bickered, back and forth and sharp, to stir up emotions and irk and completely drive everything else out. Endlessly, tirelessly, and like a bad habit that’s far too easy to fall into with her.

The backs of her legs meet the edge of the bed and they come to a halt, her fingers finally untwisting from his shirt. Arya doesn’t pull away completely though, and he feels the brush of her fingertips down the front of his body until she finds the lace of his breeches. Her nails pick at the knot, and Gendry knows she can feel him rigid underneath, straining against the ties and making her task more difficult. But Arya’s better with knots than he is and she’s got it undone, tearing the leather tie loose impatiently and slipping her hand into the opening. He surged into her hands, exposed and not the least bit cold in Arya’s grasp.

 

She feels the moment his resolve snaps, sometime while she’s tugging the knot free in his breeches. He’d tied it tight enough to moor a ship, and it was no wonder why when she touched bare skin beneath and found him hard as iron and just as unyielding. She’d never touched a man before and wasn’t sure what to do exactly, so she settled for grabbing his cock while he kissed her, licking at her lips and nipping her tongue.

When her fingers close around him his hips jerk. She nearly let go, afraid she’s hurt him before she realizes if she has hurt him he likes it because he keeps pushing himself against her harder.

They land on the mattress in a heap, his breeches down about as far as her shift is up. Dimly she registers the sound of the mattress’s bad seam giving way completely but if the bed goes they’ll always have the floor and Arya can’t be bothered to stop kissing Gendry for all the featherbeds in Westeros.

The second sound of fabric rending is her shift, stuck tangled around her arms. Gendry tears it loose and throws it aside, never breaking the contact between their warring lips. He cups her breasts in rough, large hands and she gasps; a strangled, broken cry entirely at odds with the satisfaction she feels when he touches her there.

Her hands slip under the loosened waist of his breeches and she pushes them down, off, out of her way. Instinct and the need for him near to her guides her legs around his waist, and when their bare skin meets the contact is electrifying. He’d acted cold when he came in from outside but he doesn’t _feel_ cold at all, and Arya arches her back to touch more of him, urging his shirt off impatiently.

When he reaches up to remove it their hips align, and Arya moans when he nudges against her. She presses her hand against his cheek and holds his gaze, hoping to make him understand. “I want you.”

It’s an obvious statement, but one that she needs him to hear anyway. The choice might have been taken from her in a hundred different ways, through force or by treaty or alliance but here and now only she can decide who she shares this with. And her choice had always been Gendry, whether or not he knew or believed it.

His hand finds its way between their bodies, and when he slips his finger between her folds Arya knows that there’s no way he can question the truth of her words.

“You’re wetter than the bathwater,” he whispers, his breath ragged and surprised, somehow, that she should be this eager.

“I told you,” she panted, trying to retain her composure while he strokes her, presses his thumb into her and makes the muscles in her thighs jump at the contact. “I want you. I want you inside of me, I want-

“And you’ll have me,” he promises, his lips brushing hers again before they drift lower. He kisses her breasts, suckles each coral tipped nipple delicately and then scrapes them lightly with his teeth when she cries out impatiently.

In truth Gendry seems almost as impatient as she is, because she suspects he could spend much longer doing this then he currently spares the time for. His lips make a quick path down her ribs, over her navel and he slides his tongue teasingly into the crease where her thigh meets her body until her legs fall open completely for him. This is where she ought to feel shy, but the way his breath harshens and his fingers sink into her hips tells her that Gendry likes how she looks spread open in front of him, likes how she tastes when he flattens his tongue against her. He makes a soft noise of gratification when her toes curl against his shoulders and she moans his name, and when he kisses her a moment later she can still taste herself on his lips and feel her own wetness on his chin.

It takes some careful shifting and pressing and quite a bit of kissing for him to ease his way inside of her, but Arya is so relieved that she scarcely notices the quick, sharp stretch when he finally does. It feels foreign and strange for a moment, but when he _moves_ everything else melts away.

He takes her carefully but without any of the hesitance that she had feared. Gendry possesses her completely, driving his hips harder and faster and when she asks, deeper. She is fascinated by the feel of his body- firm muscle, coarse hair, and calloused fingers when he rubs over her again. And above all else, the thick hard heat of him fucking her.

Arya locks her heels behind him and tugs him closer, raising her body to meet his thrusts. The friction is blinding, and when her shaking legs no longer hold her Gendry presses them to the beleaguered mattress and with the utmost dedication brings her to a peak, a rapid and infinite climax that leaves her hoarse and gasping. She’s still tensing around him with the last few licks of pleasure when he wrenches himself out of her with a groan and takes himself in hand, his seed spilling onto the smooth skin of her belly.

Their eyes meet again then, his cock still in his hand and both of them breathless. Arya fears seeing regret in his eyes, or worse- that he might offer an apology. But he only retrieves her forgotten shift and wipes her clean before they finally make it under the covers.

“You’re wonderful,” he whispered, reaching for her. “Come here, lay next to me.”

“I _am_ next to you, and I can’t.” she explained. Arya’s side of the bed was currently sloping downwards due to the loss of stuffing. “I’m going to roll off.”

Gendry chuckled and wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her close, not satisfied with their position until their bodies were wedded from head to toe and they were both perched safely above the incline.

“How much do you think the inn keep will charge for ruining the mattress?” Gendry asked, his lips warm against her ear.

“More than its value, I’m certain.”

“It feels like a fine featherbed to me.”

“That’s _me_ you’re feeling,” Arya corrected, as his hands were currently gliding over her anew and she wondered if they were ever going to sleep at all. “but I’m sure whatever the charge it will have been worth it.”

It was the first thing in a week and a half that they could agree upon.


End file.
